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#MeToo in China: How Do the Voiceless Rise Up in an Authoritarian State?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2021

Xiong Jing  and
Dušica Ristivojević
Xiong Jing
Affiliation:
University of Hong Kong
Dušica Ristivojević
Affiliation:
University of Helsinki
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Extract

Amid the global #MeToo movement, the #MeToo movement in China started in early 2018. For over a year, several influential cases, broad civic participation and engagement, as well as extensive discussions shocked and shook the whole country, creating a sociopolitical dynamic that was unusual in the context of persistent suppression of civil society and strict restrictions on freedom of speech. As feminist activists and researchers—Jing living and working in China, Dušica doing her fieldwork in Taiwan at the time—we were astounded by the powerful challenge that #MeToo has posed to misogynistic societies around the globe. What we have been trying to understand is how the #MeToo movement emerged and grew even as so many other social movements were suppressed in China, and what strategies the survivors, volunteers, and activists in the #MeToo movement used to break through the overwhelming censorship and restrictions.

Type
Critical Perspectives on Gender and Politics
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , September 2021 , pp. 490 - 499
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Women, Gender, and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association

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